Curry Carrot Soup

I am sure you can flavor this recipe with purchased curry powder but it will not be the same; blending your own spices for curry, I think, is worth the extra three minutes of measuring them out. Portion the spices and set them aside in a little bowl before starting to make the soup.

Adding a potato makes it smoother and creamier—without milk or cream. If you cook everything in a pressure cooker, and puree the soup with an immersion blender, you can have dinner on the table in ½ hour. Figure one-third of the cooking time with in a pressure cooker. Look for mustard seeds in the bulk herb and spice jars at the health food store.

Curry Carrot Soup

3 tablespoons unsalted butter or extra virgin olive oil

1 onion, chopped

2 cloves garlic, minced

1/2 teaspoon mustard seeds

1/2 teaspoon ground turmeric

1/2 teaspoon ground ginger

1/2 teaspoon ground cumin

1/2 teaspoon Real Salt

1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon

1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper

1 pound carrots, cleaned and cut into slices

1 potato, peeled and cut into ½” cubes

4 cups cups vegetable stock

1 tablespoon lemon juice

1 tablespoon agave nectar or honey

Chopped fresh parsley leaves, for garnish

Melt the butter in a large saucepan and cook and stir the onions and garlic until the onion is translucent. Add all of the spices, from the mustard seeds through the cayenne, and cook for several minutes, stirring constantly. Add the carrots and continue cooking and stirring for several more minutes. Add the vegetable stock, cover tightly, and simmer until the carrots are very tender, at least 1/2 hour.

Puree the cooked carrots in a blender, in batches, or with an immersion blender in the pot. Stir in the lemon juice and agave nectar.

Taste and correct the seasoning with more cayenne and salt as desired. Serve hot, sprinkled with chopped parsley.

Makes 4 to 6 servings.

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Simple Leek, Garlic and Potato Soup

For a surprise color, I made this soup with the red-skinned and red-flesh Mountain Rose potato.

diced Mountain Rose potatoes

2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil

2 leeks, thinly sliced leeks, white and light green parts only, about 1 1/2 cups

7 cups light vegetable broth

2 pounds potatoes, well-scrubbed and cut in 3/4-inch dice

7 or 8 cloves garlic, peeled

Real Salt and freshly ground black pepper

Chopped green onion, for garnish

Heat the olive oil in a large, heavy saucepan over medium flame. Add the leeks and cook, stirring frequently, about 10 minutes. Add the vegetable broth, potatoes and garlic and bring to a boil. Reduce heat to medium-low, cover and simmer 20 to 30 minutes, until the potatoes are very tender.

Puree the soup on the pot with an immersion blender. Season to taste with salt and pepper. If your vegetable broth is low sodium, you will need to add more salt. If you prefer a smooth texture, strain out any skins that did not puree completely.

Serve in bowls, garnished with the chopped green onions.

Makes about 8 servings.

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Green & White Gazpacho

We Ranui Gardens CSA members are lucky that John loves garlic and grows about 10 varietals of hardneck garlic. Hardneck garlic is valued for complexity of flavor, fares well in cooler climes and has a shorter storage life.

Early in the season we enjoyed scapes, the edible green stalks shooting out of the middle of hardneck garlic plants.  Cutting off the scape sends more nutrition to the garlic in the ground, though if the scape is not cut, the tip forms bulbils, or flowers, also edible.  We’ve also had “green” or young garlic in our boxes this year, pulled from the ground before the cloves are well formed. Now Ranui’s garlic is mature and cured, having cured for three to four weeks and we are getting some in our boxes as often as zucchini.

This time of year I make gazpacho, a cold soup of Spanish origin, with fresh tomatoes, cucumbers and garlic. (And why not add some of those tender small zucchini?)

There are thousands of gazpacho recipes out there, variations on the hot weather and summer harvest theme. Because tomatoes are not in the mix, this recipe is untraditional. But it does have a good dose of garlic.  I wrote an article about Garlic and Gazpacho for Salt Lake City’s Catalyst Magazine’s August issue. Here is the recipe I gave. Hint: If you hit a clove of garlic with the side of chef’s knife, the skin will loosen and make it easy to peel.

3 cloves garlic, (peeled and crushed)

3 medium cucumbers, peeled, seeded and chopped

1 small green pepper

2 green onions, chopped

2 tbs. chopped fresh basil, cilantro or parsley

2 cups cold vegetable broth

2 cups plain yogurt

2 to 3 tbs. sherry wine vinegar or fresh-squeezed lemon juice

3 tbs. extra virgin olive oil

Sea salt

White pepper

Cherry tomatoes, red or gold, cut in tiny wedges

Fresh basil, cilantro or parsley, chopped, for garnish

Put the garlic, half of the cucumbers, green pepper, green onions, basil and vegetable broth in a blender and puree until smooth. Add the remaining cucumbers and puree. Transfer to a bowl and whisk in the yogurt, vinegar and olive oil. Season to taste with salt and white pepper. Chill until cold. Serve garnished with the tomatoes, and more green onions and fresh herbs.

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More Zucchini

Well I guess since zucchini is green it falls into the category of greens, and farmer John did say there would be lots of greens in our Ranui CSA boxes. This is the third week straight with zucchini.

What to do?  At least it’s the Roman varietal zucchini in our boxes; Costata Romanesca does have more substance and real flavor than the brunt—of–jokes classic green zucchini .

Zucchini Ideas:

Grill zucchini simply, with olive oil and salt and pepper, which is what we did last week.

Or bake up some Chocolate Zucchini muffins—a variation from the Chocolate Zucchini Bread in my Chocolate Snowball cookbook.

Go to fellow blogger Gwen’s  terrific recipe for stuffed zucchini—and read her funny comments about zucchini.

This post from another blogger has ideas for the top 10 best things to do with too much zucchini. As I read Cheryl’s ideas I was giggling out loud—“lol” in internet vernacular.

This summer I’ve been writing monthly for Catalyst Magazine here in Utah. Go to Catalyst’s July issue to learn fun zucchini facts and trivia as well as my advice to pick and enjoy the blossoms before they turn into the green phallic fruit.

Here is a variation on the recipe for Squash Blossom Soup from that same Catalyst article. Enjoy this soup hot or cold.

For efficiency, use an immersion blender to puree the soup, it stands right in the soup pot and eliminates the muss and fuss of hot soup transfer and exploding out of the blender. An immersion blender is a purchase worth every penny.

Cotija cheese is a Hispanic-style cheese–somewhat salty and doesn’t really melt–you may substitute any cheese you want or skip it altogether.

Squash Blossoms on the Grill

Zucchini Soup

1 tablespoon canola or grapeseed oil

1 onion, chopped

2 cloves garlic, minced

About 5 cups grated zucchini

3 cups veggie broth

1/4 cup cilantro, basil or parsley leaves

Dash cayenne pepper

Real Salt or sea salt

1/2 cup crumbled cotija cheese, optional

1/4 cup lightly toasted pumpkin seeds, optional

Avocado slices, optional

In a large saucepan, heat the oil on medium heat and sauté the onion and garlic for about 5 minutes. Add the zucchini and the broth, cilantro and cayenne. Cover and simmer 10 minutes, until the zucchini is soft. Puree in a blender, or with an immersion blender.

Season to taste with sea salt and more cayenne.

Serve garnished with garnishes of crumbled cheese, pumpkin seeds or slices of avocado, if you wish.

Makes 4 to 6 servings.

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Red Lentils and Garlic Scapes

You can go two ways with red lentils—cook them until they are barely tender, 8 to 10 minutes, or cook them longer, 25 to 35 minutes and (whoops?) you’ve made a thick soup, popularly known as dal in India. This recipe features Indian spices–let’s shoot for the first and if we end up with dal, no problem.

cooked and drained red lentils

Red lentils are not truly red, but more orange in hue, and when cooked, they turn yellow, even more so when seasoned with turmeric!

expensive scapes

Today I saw Garlic Scapes in the local very expensive health food store. They were on sale: 2 for $6.00. Someone is laughing all the way to the bank and I bet it s not the farmer.  But today we have scapes in our Ranui Gardens CSA box. Garlic scapes are mellow in garlic flavor, like green garlic, and another early bonus, besides green garlic, of a garlic crop. To prepare the scapes, trim and remove the seedpods from the top. Break away the tougher bottom part just as you might for asparagus.

trimmed and ready for chopping

The cumin and mustard seeds add a fabulous dimension to the curry and can be bought in small amounts from the bulk spice section at our local health food store. If you don’t have the seeds, substitute with ground spices.

Red Lentils and Garlic Scapes

1 cup red lentils

4 cups water

1 teaspoon cumin seeds

½ teaspoon black (or brown or yellow) mustard seeds

1 teaspoon curry powder

½ teaspoon ground coriander

½ teaspoon ground cumin

½ teaspoon turmeric

½ teaspoon finely grated fresh ginger

1 clove garlic, minced

½ teaspoon Real Salt

Pinch cayenne pepper

2 tablespoons grapeseed oil

1 cup chopped garlic scapes (1/4-inch pieces)

Rinse and pick over the lentils, discarding anything foreign. In a saucepan, bring to a boil in the water. Cook about 8 minutes. The peas should still be firm, barely tender. Drain and rinse them with cold water. Set aside.

Measure the cumin and mustard seeds, the curry powder, coriander, cumin, turmeric, ginger, garlic, salt and cayenne into a small bowl. In a skillet, heat the oil over medium flame. Add the scapes and sauté until the scapes are tender but crunchy, about 10 minutes. Stir in the spices and cook, stirring constantly, until you hear the mustard seeds pop, about 30 seconds. Stir in the cooked lentils and cook until they are heated through. Season to taste with salt, if needed.

Makes 4 to 6 servings.

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Green Garlic, Spinach and Tortilla Soup

A milestone birthday came my way last month, and to celebrate we threw a party–with house made margaritas. Now I can easily say no thanks to a margarita made with bottled mix, but if the recipe is pure tequila, triple sec and fresh lime juice, that’s another story. And not just any lime juice, it must be key lime juice, or jugo de limones, from the smaller, sweeter limes of Florida and Mexico.

Limones and Serrano chiles

Our Latino market here in Park City sold me a case of fragrant limones—for $20. And the day of the party, my girlfriend Laurie came over and hand-squeezed them all. It took her 3 hours. In the end it was probably worth her sore wrist, because this month her husband celebrates the same milestone birthday and she has ample fresh-squeezed proper lime juice now stored in her freezer, ready for many more batches of house made margaritas. Ole! Ole!

What I am illustrating here is that you really must use the same limes for this soup, loosely based on Yucatan Lime Soup, famous where these limones are abundantly falling off the trees. Our Ranui Gardens CSA box this week contains sorrel, spinach, and green garlic and I have a temporary crown on one side of my mouth, so soup like this is in order.

Green Garlic, Spinach and Tortilla Soup

4 corn tortillas, preferably organic

Grapeseed or olive oil

1 bunch green garlic, washed and chopped in its entirety

2 serrano chiles, seeds and veins removed, finely minced

1 quart vegetable stock

1 (14.5 ounce) can diced tomatoes

2 bay leaves

2 sprigs fresh thyme

1 tablespoon cracked black peppercorns

¼ cup chopped sorrel leaves

1 cup chopped washed spinach leaves

1 teaspoon grated lime zest

¼ cup fresh-squeezed juice from key limes

Real Salt, as needed

Avocado slices, optional

Brush the tortillas with oil and cut them in strips, about 1/2 inch wide and 2 inches long. Toast in the oven or toaster oven until just lightly toasted, which should take 4 to 5 minutes. Keep an eye on the strips—they can quickly go from perfectly toasted to burnt. Set them aside.

Heat about a tablespoon of oil in a soup pot on low flame. Sauté until the green garlic is translucent but not brown, stirring often. Add the vegetable stock and the tomatoes, along with the bay leaves, thyme and cracked peppercorns. Bring the pot to a simmer. Add the sorrel and spinach and cook and stir another minute.

Remove the thyme sprigs and the bay leaves. Add the lime zest and juice. Season to taste with salt. Serve immediately, garnished with the tortilla strips and avocado, if desired.

Serves 4.

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Greens and Potato Soup

This warming soup has a Southwestern tilt, with the pintos, fresh chile and hominy. Hominy is dried corn kernels from which the hull and germ have been removed; its distinctive texture is essential to posole or pozole, the thick, hearty soup from Mexico. I buy large cans of hominy at the Mexican grocery and freeze what I don’t use for later.

1 tablespoon olive oil

1 pound potatoes, well-scrubbed and cut into 1/2-inch cubes

1/2 teaspoon sea salt

1/2 teaspoon freshly ground pepper

7 cups vegetable stock

1 (15-ounce) can pinto beans, rinsed and drained

1 cup hominy, rinsed and drained

2 cloves garlic, finely chopped

1 serrano or jalapeno chile, seeds and veins removed, finely chopped

1 teaspoon ground cumin

7 ounces (6 cups) fresh greens, such as mess o’ greens

2 teaspoons fresh lemon juice or rice wine vinegar

Crumbled cotija or feta cheese for garnish (optional)

In a non-stick skillet, heat oil over medium-high. Add potatoes and salt and pepper and cook, stirring often, about 8 to 10 minutes.

Meanwhile, heat the vegetable broth in a large soup pot. Add the pinto beans, garlic, chile pepper and cumin. Wash the greens and remove the stems. Coarsely chop them and stir into the broth. When the potatoes are golden brown, add them. Simmer the soup until the potatoes are just tender. Add the lemon juice, taste and season with more salt and pepper, if needed.

Makes about 6 servings.

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Caramelized Onion and Chickpea Soup

I don’t think it is officially Indian summer in Park City, though we are certainly enjoying very cool nights with daytime temperatures reaching into the high 70’s. Each morning we notice a few more hints of red oak in the green hills that never turned brown this summer. The only not-still-green are the grasses, and the seeds from those drying grasses are driving anyone around here with allergies to the brink of wishing for early snow. And those lovely yellow flowers of the desert sage—they aren’t so forgiving to the watery eye and runny nose crowd either.

I think I got hit with a double whammy this week. I have all the symptoms of these allergies and a cold besides. Makes me want onion soup for dinner.

onions above the kitchen sink

Our Ranui Garderns CSA box has included onions the last 4 or 5 weeks and I bought a bag of organic onions at the store the day before we received our first CSA onions. The first couple of weeks the onions came with their stalks. I braided them together and hung them in a holding pattern above the kitchen sink. I think onions are good feng shui, the ancient Chinese study of the natural environment, and I am hoping they will keep our kitchen protected. And maybe, even with my attempt to incorporate onions into many recent meals, we’ll still have a few onions left in a month, when our weekly CSA boxes cease for the season. Slicing this many onions can a tearful job. If you have a Cuisinart—use the slicing disc and you will be that much closer to soup for dinner, with time for a shot of tequila. About the tequila: I use 100% agave to deglaze the onions because that’s in our liquor cabinet and brandy is not. You won’t find misoin a classic onion soup either, though the tequila and the miso each add a subtle note.

caramelized onions

 

 

 

Caramelized Onion and Chickpea Soup

¼ cup extra virgin olive oil, or butter or a combination of the 2

4 large onions, thinly sliced

all the onions

4 garlic cloves, sliced

3 tablespoons 100% agave tequila añejo or brandy

5 cups vegetable broth

¾ cup cooked chickpeas

2 bay leaves

1 tablespoon dark miso paste

Sat and freshly ground black pepper, to taste

Toasted baguette slices with basil pesto

Heat the oil and/or butter in a heavy bottomed skillet. Stir in the onions and cook over medium heat, stirring occasionally, until the onions are very soft and turning brown. This will take time—at least 45 minutes. If the onions start to brown too quickly, turn down the heat; don’t hurry their caramelization. Stir in the garlic in the last 10 minutes, after you see some hints of brown onion.

Deglaze the pan with the tequila, stirring it around. Transfer to a saucepan or small soup pot. Add the vegetable stock, the chickpeas and the bay leaves. Bring to a boil, lower the heat, and simmer for 15 minutes or so.

While the soup is cooking, toast some slices of baguette and slather them with basil pesto. Set aside.

In a small bowl smooth the miso paste with water. Just before serving, fish out the bay leaves and stir the miso into the soup. Season with salt, if needed, and plenty of freshly ground black pepper.

Ladle the soup into bowls, slipping a few pesto croutons into each bowl.

Makes 4 to 6 servings.

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Vegan Vichyssoise

Here is a potato and leek soup to take advantage of the week’s harvest that includes both vegetables. It’s another cold soup to help savor these lovely warm days we keep having. Technically, pureed leek and potato soup, served cold with cream added, earns this French title—pronounced vihsh-ee-SWAHZ.

Warba potatoes and leeks

But I like the vegan alliteration, and if it weren’t for cheese and farm fresh eggs, our kitchen would be pretty much vegan, and you will see for yourself how potatoes endow this creamless vichyssoise “creamy”. Now if you don’t care about alliterations and you don’t want to be vegan, make a richer vichyssoise: sauté the veggies in butter instead of olive oil and/or stir in up to 1 cup heavy cream, sour cream or yogurt after the puree is cold. Either way, make sure to sound the “z” at the end, even though you may have heard it mispronounced vihsh-ee-SWAH here in the US of A.

This is one of those soups that earns an immersion blender a place on your wish list, except if you already own such a toy. Simply place the immersion blender in the soup pot and whir away, instead of carefully transferring the hot liquid to the blender, a few cups at a time, and then having the heat of the soup pop the blender lid off anyway, spilling hot potatoes and leeks all over the counter.

The white miso adds another dimension to vegan vichyssoise. If you include the optional miso, dissolve it in the cup of hot water while the vegetables cook, and stir in, after you turn off the heat. (Miso loses flavor and supposedly much of its nutritional and beneficial probiotic qualities when boiled.)
Vegan Vichyssoise

3 or 4 potatoes, any kind (we have white Warbas in our Ranui Gardens CSA box)

1 bunch leeks, 3 to 6 depending on their diameter

2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil

Real Salt and white pepper

½ cup white wine

3 to 4 cups vegetable broth

1 tablespoon white miso, optional,

1 cup water

Sliced avocado and chopped chives, for garnish

Peel the potatoes and cut them into ½-inch cubes. Wash the leeks well. Trim and discard the dark green parts. Cut them in half down the center, checking for any remaining dirt. Slice the leeks into thin half rings.

Heat the olive oil in a large saucepan on medium flame. Add the vegetables and cook and stir them for several minutes, until the leeks have softened. Sprinkle with some of the salt and pepper.

Stir in the white wine. If you are including the white miso, use only 3 cups of the vegetable broth; otherwise add all 4 cups now. Cover the pot. Turn down the heat so the liquid stays at a simmer and cook until the potatoes are very tender, 15 to 20 minutes.  Stir in the miso, if using, dissolved in the water at this point.

Puree the hot liquid and cooked vegetables with an immersion blender, or (with caution) in a blender container. Season to taste with more salt and white pepper.

Refrigerate or stir over an ice bath until very cold. Serve garnished with the avocado and or chives.

Makes 4 servings.

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Gazpacho Ranui

I confess that we haven’t yet emptied our fridge of last week’s Ranui Gardens CSA box—I worked late 4 evenings and so did Robbie and we didn’t have the energy to cook a “real” meal. One warm evening I sat on the deck at 8:45 and devoured nothing but a grilled ear of corn from Wednesday’s Park City Farmer’s Market. Just last night Robbie grilled the zucchini and a couple of yellow onions, filling for quicky burritos, along with black beans, cheese and salsa. I still have parsley, well preserved in a jar of water; a cucumber and most of last week’s green onions await rescue from our cold produce bin. Bring it on, this seasonal splendor, and let nothing go to waste. Tonight I am making gazpacho, to delve well into today’s new late August bounty.

Gazpacho. Usually a raw puree of fresh tomatoes, garlic, cucumbers, olive oil and an acid, like wine vinegar, gazpacho is cold summery soup. The name is Spanish, from the Andalusia area of the south of Spain, where fresh vegetables have a much longer season than we do here in the Utah mountains, but the ingredients are local and were gathered today, well except for what’s still in the fridge from last week.

As you can see, this recipe is not written in stone: I want you to feel free to change things around depending on what’s in your larder. Substitute lemon juice or Key lime juice for vinegar, add more or less of any vegetables, some in the puree, some neatly diced for texture.

Green Gazpacho with Feta Crumbles

This week mine is quite green; because I used less of the V-8 and a green heirloom tomato and added the arugula. Garnish your version with crumbled feta cheese or hard boiled egg for added protein, and toasty croutons for crunch. Try “white” gazpacho, with a cup or so of plain yogurt stirred in the puree, and the tomatoes diced, on top for color.

Gazpacho Ranui

2 or 3 garlic cloves

8 to 16 ounces V-8 or Knudsen Very Veggie juice

2 cucumbers, peeled and seeded

1 or 2 small zucchini

1 green bell pepper or 1 Anaheim chili pepper

2 or 3 ripe tomatoes

2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil

2 tablespoons sherry wine vinegar, red wine vinegar or lemon juice

Handful arugula, stems removed and discarded

Fresh chopped herbs, such as basil, thyme and/or oregano

Fresh chopped parsley or cilantro

½ cup or so sliced green onions

2 cups cold vegetable broth

Sea salt

Fresh ground pepper

With the motor of the food processor running, mince the garlic by dropping it through the feed tube. Process until it is very fine. Add the V-8 juice. Coarsely chop half of the cucumber, zucchini and bell pepper. Put that into the processor. Finely dice the other half of these vegetables and set aside for garnish. Coarsely chop the tomatoes; add them to the processor. Add the arugula. Process until smooth. Pour into a bowl and whisk in the oil, vinegar, herbs, green onions and veggie broth. Season to taste with salt and pepper. Serve very cold, chilled over an ice bath or after some time in the fridge. Makes 6 to 8 servings.

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